Nadia Abu El Haj

Biography

Early life and education Abu El-Haj was born in the United States, the second daughter of a "Long Island Episcopalian" mother, and a Palestinian Muslim father. Her maternal grandfather was French and maternal grandmother, Norwegian-American, and she has characterized her religious upbringing as "church twice a year." She returned to the United States for her university studies, attending Bryn Mawr College for her Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science, Between 1993 and 1995, she did post-doctoral work on a fellowship from Harvard University's Academy for International and Area Studies, focusing on the Middle East. She also received fellowships from the University of Pennsylvania Mellon Program, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. She has also lectured at the New York Academy of Sciences, New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, the University of Cambridge, the London School of Economics (LSE), and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London. In a 2008 interview with The New Yorker, she said, "I'm not a public intellectual. ... I don't court controversy."

Facts on the Ground has been reviewed in both scholarly and popular publications. The book was awarded the Middle East Studies Association of North America 2002 Albert Hourani Book Award which it shared with Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled's Being Israeli: the Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship. Negative reviews were intense. The book was also dismissed as 'crank scholarship,' and she was called a 'charlatan anthropologist'. An internet domain was registered in her name dedicated exclusively to defaming her and damaging her reputation.

Other scholarship Abu El-Haj's more recent scholarship explores the field of genetic anthropology through the analysis of projects aimed at reconstructing the origins and migrations of specific populations.

In 2022, Abu El-Haj published Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America (Verso). The book examines how understandings of post-traumatic stress disorder changed from the Vietnam War to the post-9/11 period, and argues that public attention to soldiers' trauma has overshadowed the people killed by American military action abroad. In a review for The Washington Post, Lyle Jeremy Rubin praised the book but questioned how its argument would apply to veterans who did not share the author's political views.

Tenure controversy Abu El-Haj joined the Anthropology Department at Barnard College in the fall of 2002.

Dueling petitions On August 7, 2007, an online petition against the professor was started by Paula Stern, a 1982 Barnard alumna who lives in the Israeli settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim. The petition claimed tenure should be denied because of Abu El-Haj's perceived anti-Semitic bias in her research, with criticism centering around her book Facts on the Ground. In response to Stern's petition, in late August

Academic debate of Abu El-Haj's credentials In August 2007, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on support for Abu El-Haj among scholars of anthropology and of Middle East studies. Lisa Wedeen, Chair of the Political Science department at the University of Chicago, said that Facts on the Ground showed that Abu El-Haj was more interested in the philosophy of science than in political argument.

The Chronicle of Higher Education also wrote that many of Abu El-Haj's supporters said that peer review, and not public pressure, is the appropriate measure of a scholar's work, noting that she has been the recipient of many awards, grants, and academic appointments. Segal later told The Forward that Abu El-Haj hates Israelis.

Segal and Dever spoke at lectures sponsored by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and LionPAC (a pro-Israel advocacy group at Columbia) In responding to the controversy surrounding Abu El-Haj's work, Barnard President Judith Shapiro said that showing how archaeological research can be used for political and ideological purposes is a legitimate cultural anthropological enterprise.

Tenure decision On November 2, 2007, Barnard announced that Abu El-Haj had been granted tenure. Subsequent to the tenure decision, Barnard president Shapiro praised Abu El-Haj to an interviewer from the New Yorker.

Published works Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in post-9/11 America. Verso Books. September 27, 2022.